The whole of Safa Park is completely covered with lush lawn grass barring areas reserved for seasonal flower beds, offices, nursery and children's play areas.
Recently, when I was on a field trip to Safa Park looking for birds and butterflies I came across a coral tree. It was fully covered with gorgeous red boat-shaped flowers.
As I went close to the tree I was amazed to see nearly a dozen specimens of Alexandrine and rose-ringed parakeets, common myna, pied starling, red-vented and yellow-vented bulbuls, house sparrows and purple sunbirds drinking nectar from the red coral flowers.
The smallest of the lot was the purple sunbird. As the flowers are boat-shaped and more than 10cm in length - longer than the size of the sunbird - it has developed its own technique of piercing to reach the base of the flower to draw nectar.
Bulbuls and sparrows were also piercing the flower base to reach the nectar with their short bills.
But the parakeets were rather destructive as they were busy removing individual flower buds and eating just the base or removing each flower to eat the base with nectar. As a result the green lawn was partly covered with the vermilion petals of the coral flower.
